Stephen Sondheim was a game fanatic. He collected old board games, did lots of puzzles etc. etc. This fact has been covered thoroughly and I’m getting bored trying to update it and make it sound exciting so lets get to the meat. In 1966 Sondheim was invited to be a
Watch this extraordinary instructional video of an extraordinary machine, the 1931 RCA VICTOR RADIOLA AUTOMATIC ELECTROLA. Designed to allow listeners to listen to up to thirty minutes of music at a time instead of having to get up and flip their 78rpm record every three minutes, the machine retailed for
Here’s an excellent one hour conversation between Stephen Sondheim and Adam Guettel, filmed in Sondheim’s Turtle Bay townhouse on E. 49th Street. Aside from getting to see the very nice interiors of Sondheim’s long-time NYC abode you get to hear more from Sondheim than the usual anecdotes, though you’ll get
Below are the last two installments of the pioneering jazz/blues documentary “Music Of The South”, originally aired on CBS in 1956. I don’t have the exact airdate but an enterprising tv-head would have no problem figuring it out. Simply watch the “outro” at the end of the show (included here
It is with great pride and delight that I post the first two out of six parts of an exceedingly rare and important archival item–a documentary made by father, Frank De Felitta, called “Music Of The South”. Photographed in 1956 in the deepest backcountry of Alabama, the film is a
The critic and historian, Martin Gottfried, in his excellent biography of the demonic Broadway producer Jed Harris, notes that the 1920’s were “times of floridity, of vamps with panthers on leashes, of Rudolph Valentino and Bela Lugosi…in the 1920’s it was not so odd to view and even live
I mentioned the other day, while discussing Susan Hayward, Hollywood’s brief foray into a sub-genre that I think of as “musical melodramas.” These films are all post-war items–the era brought with it a frankness about human frailty, compulsions and violence that wasn’t earlier considered appropriate for mass entertainment–and used period
I wish I could say that my story of meeting Rudy Vallee ended with him giving me his megaphone. It didn’t. But still it ended in a pleasant enough way to warrant this final Rudy posting. I did as Tommy, his friend/helper, suggested (see 1/11 post) and sent Rudy a
So there I am, standing in my parents house with a letter addressed to me from Rudy Vallee. I recall my mother coming in the room and saying–as if nothing before in her life had ever been quite so strange–“Raymond…did you get a letter from Rudy Vallee?” I opened it,
Does anyone remember the huge fuss made in newspapers around the world in the early 1970’s when the scandal broke that a faded star of yesteryear– singer Rudy Vallee–desired to change the name of the street he lived on (Pyramid Place in the Hollywood Hills) to Rue De Vallee? A Congressman